[C+C] Robo tactics tileset + sprites

[Fickludd]

Hi,

I'm extremely new to pixel art, but since I'm rehabilitation programmer I though some game art would be cool. So this is my first attempt at doing some stuff for a game project that's been circling my head for a while.

The plan would be to have top-down view, with a couple of player controllable robots. The setting could be techy, fallouty, gritty or whatever.

Going for low res (like Canabalt, Mode and Cave story), specs are
Floor tile: 8x8
Wall tile: 8x14
Sprite: 8x12
and hoping for total 16 color palette.


UPDATE Aug 17th


UPDATE Aug 1st




UPDATE July 13th







First attempt:


Any critique, comment, feedback, edit or shameless boasting of own ability wanted  

[Yuri]

The robots look like alien critters, isn't it? Not a bad thing, though.

[Fickludd]

The robots look like alien critters, isn't it? Not a bad thing, though.

Yeah, it wasn't really intended to get the alien head, that just happened =). Four pointy legs felt right though.

Update with reworked colors:

[Ichigo Jam]

This is quite nice; I particularly like the scenery colours.

I think you should try and increase the difference between the tops of the walls and the floor, especially on the desert tiles. At the moment I think it's too easy to read the tops of the walls as bumps on the floor.

I tried an edit to show you what I mean (I basically re-used your side-of-wall texture on the top of the desert walls):


I also added shadows to the walls, and I used some of the brown on techy floor to try and help it integrate with the desert floor better.

[Fickludd]

I think you should try and increase the difference between the tops of the walls and the floor, especially on the desert tiles. At the moment I think it's too easy to read the tops of the walls as bumps on the floor.
I also added shadows to the walls, and I used some of the brown on techy floor to try and help it integrate with the desert floor better.

Hey, nice suggestions! I totally agree with the desert wall top bumpiness. Shadows and dirt also good ideas...

...remakes desert walls with rocky tops + techy floor dirt + shadows...

v3 tiles:




I'm pretty happy with the tiles for now, but the units are causing me trouble. How do I

a) get the readily readable against the background (both tile and desert). The bright high saturation colors work, but the units look ugly.
b) Make something look good in only 8x12 pixels?

Some attempts:

[questseeker]

The third "tech" tile in the bottom row is so dark that it's more similar to wall sides than to the other 5 fellow tech tiles. At the very least, it looks special.

The thick dark gutter between tiles is very heavy: I think "tech" tiles would be nicer with only hints of their boundaries (just enough to count squares easily).

[Fickludd]

The third "tech" tile in the bottom row is so dark that it's more similar to wall sides than to the other 5 fellow tech tiles. At the very least, it looks special.

The thick dark gutter between tiles is very heavy: I think "tech" tiles would be nicer with only hints of their boundaries (just enough to count squares easily).

Thanks for the feedback. Uhm, I agree with the darker tile, it's less dark in this edition.
Actually I like the gridiness of the techy tiles. Of course, breaking it up a bit could be good - I've added some anomalies + one 2 tile square that breaks the grid. Opinions?



I've also worked some more on the robos populating the world. I'm totally out of ideas for new robo designs, any suggestions would be greatly appreciated. Anyway each robo will have one standing pose and a two frame walking animation in all 4 directions. Maybe later there will be a wreck frame for when they're dead. Death occurs by explosion. In the sprite sheet is also a bullet animation + bullet hitting wall animation, and two HUD elements: Target unit indicator and selected unit indicator.

[EyeCraft]

Okay... forgive my gif not disposing of frames properly. If you open it up in an editor and look at each frame you'll see how its supposed to look. For the life of me I can't figure out WHY it is doing this. 


( Can anyone help me with this?  )

I'll do one without transparency:



With explosions you need to have a sense of motion to the smoke. Think about the material expanding outwards and floating upwards. Also having the cloud go completely dark after being completely bright doesn't make sense, lighting-wise. If you want to do a flash, best to do it before the smoke clouds appear.



Also, don't be afraid to breathe a little colour into your backgrounds. You can still keep the contrast low with higher levels of saturation. This will make the scene more exciting. You just don't want to take it too far or the readability goes out the window. 

[Fickludd]

With explosions you need to have a sense of motion to the smoke. Think about the material expanding outwards and floating upwards. Also having the cloud go completely dark after being completely bright doesn't make sense, lighting-wise. If you want to do a flash, best to do it before the smoke clouds appear.

Also, don't be afraid to breathe a little colour into your backgrounds. You can still keep the contrast low with higher levels of saturation. This will make the scene more exciting. You just don't want to take it too far or the readability goes out the window. 

Thanks for the feedback, and nice explosion! Looking at yours I'm definitely gonna go over my smoke again. Regarding the flash: I got the flash-idea from the excellent metal slug explosions http://www.spriters-resource.com/arcade/ms/sheet/11301. My logic behind having the dark frame after the bright one is to trick the eye that the bright one was actually brighter. After seeing something very bright everything else seems dark until the eye adjusts, and I'm thinking this could be simulated in this way. I don't know if the flash shape should be the same as the smoke... in metal slug they used circle flashes but that didn't work very well for me.

Yeah the BG might still be a bit unsaturated =). I won't take it as far as your examle, but once I make a more complete mock-up it will be upsaturated a bit.

So yeah, I'll soon be back with a nicer explosion!

[Fickludd]

Ok, new update:

Redid explosion with EyeCraft's edit as a reference... comments?


Also new mockup with user interface